You are probably familiar with this problem: A sales document, a purchase order or a vacation request urgently needs to be approved. The responsible manager is on the road again - the approval is taking a long time. You have no choice but to "follow up" on the approval by phone. As soon as you reach your manager, he immediately complains about the current approval process:
"Every document has to be approved somewhere else!", "When will we finally have a convenient approval solution on the go?" or "When can I finally do the approval digitally and not on paper?"
Under S/4HANA, you now have an answer to your manager's questions: The introduction of Flexible Workflow for all your documents creates transparency and efficiency in the approval process and offers a uniform solution with which you can perform all approvals digitally.
What is Flexible Workflows?
Flexible Workflows is a new solution under SAP S/4HANA for implementing approval processes that can be used without additional licensing costs. SAP already offers such approval processes for a large number of business objects in the standard delivery. The same tool can thus be used across modules to set up new approval processes quickly and easily - whether in MM, SD, FI or other modules.
What is different than on an ECC system?
Those who had or still have an ECC system in use may wonder what the difference is to the release process there.
- Simple solution for each module: In the "pre-S/4HANA era", the approval process was either mapped in a third-party system or via board resources of ECC - for example, via release strategy. This required either additional licensing and implementation costs for external systems or using the sparse SAP functionalities, which were not user-friendly both during implementation and later in productive operation. Thanks to the full FIORI integration, both for approvals themselves and for configuration, Flexible Workflows impresses with its ease of use.
- Approval on all devices: Those who use Flexible Workflows bring their approvals to a mobile platform through FIORI integration, so managers can approve from anywhere at any time. One click on the smartphone is all it takes: Documents can be approved in a clear FIORI app on all end devices.
- Many standard workflows: In addition, there are few standard functionalities available under ECC. Flexible Workflows in S/4HANA offers many standard workflows for a wide range of SAP documents. Customer-specific flexible workflows can also be created for any business object.
And this is how it works
Let us use the example of a purchase order to illustrate the approval process.
- The responsible purchaser creates a purchase order assigned to a cost center.
- In such cases, the approval should always be made by the person responsible for the cost center. This person is determined by the system.
- The manager can now be informed about this approval via various channels. For example, the cost center manager can regularly check his inbox in the FIORI Launchpad - FIORI App: "My Inbox" - for new approvals. To speed up the approval process, the user is also informed about the approval via push notifications in the Launchpad as well as via e-mail, if desired.
- In the "My Inbox", the document can be checked and approved or rejected. Further actions such as adding an approval note or forwarding to another person are also available here. If the decision is not made until later, the document can be set to resubmission: In this case, the order remains in the approval process, but is not displayed again until a defined date.
To ensure that the creator of the document is always informed about the current progress of the approval, SAP has integrated a workflow log in the respective FIORI apps of the business object such as purchase order. In addition, such a log is also available in the GUI for some documents. However, it is important to know that approval in GUI, e.g. via Business Workplace, is not possible.
Individual configuration makes you flexible
The Flexible Workflows solution lives up to its name: The large number of configurable parameters allows the release processes to be customized. The following graphic illustrates some of the possible configuration steps:
- Workflow scenario defines for which business object a workflow is to be started.
- Threshold values, a specific plant or a company code mark the start conditions of the respective workflow.
- Approver & review steps: It can be defined who has to approve the document and who should be informed about it.
- Teams & Responsibilities: Using this new S/4HANA functionality, approval teams can be set up regardless of the organizational model.
- Exclusions: Creators of the document can be excluded from approval in order to maintain the dual control principle.
- If a responsible person is not available, substitutes can be defined for him or her.
- A large number of documents from, for example, the MM or SD module, but also from other modules, are supported by Flexible Workflow in the standard SAP system.
The mentioned features are only an excerpt of the available possibilities and can be used in combination. In addition, your own customer-specific features can be introduced.
Summary
For those who rely on an automated and individual approval process, it is worth taking a closer look at the Flexible Workflow solution. Usable in S/4HANA without additional licensing costs and quick to learn, Flexible Workflows offers predefined scenarios that can be adapted to company-specific process characteristics. Learn more in our free webinar or by contacting us directly.
